February 17, 2017

MacStories Weekly: Issue 67

In this issue: Stamp Music Importer, more iOS board games, Dave Mark’s Home screen, plus song sharing and Todoist workflows in Workflow Corner, Weekly Q&A, a DEVONthink Tip, Links, stickers, App Debuts, and recap of MacStories articles.

MACSTORIES RECOMMENDS

Great apps, accessories, gear, and media recommended by the MacStories team.

Stamp Music Importer

As part of my ongoing experiments with Spotify and Apple Music, I recently wanted to switch back to Apple Music and take almost a year of Spotify playlists with me. While there are online services and desktop export tools that allow you to quickly migrate songs from one ecosystem to another, my goal was to complete the process entirely on iOS. I tested different iPhone apps that promised to export Spotify playlists with varying degrees of success, and I found Stamp to be the most accurate of the bunch, with fewer skipped songs than similar utilities, good speed, and a utilitarian but effective interface

Stamp can move entire playlists back and forth between Spotify, Apple Music, Google Play Music, YouTube, Tidal, and Amazon Music. The app can even convert playlists to CSV files (ideal for desktop usage), and it comes with a free online service called Stamp Match that lets you upload MP3 files from your computer and tells you which online services would automatically match them.

I tried Stamp with my Apple Music and Spotify accounts. Accessing your Apple Music library is done through native iOS permissions, while Spotify requires connecting to your account from a mini browser inside the app. In my tests with multiple playlists (including the automatically generated Discover Weekly as well as curated playlists from Apple Music), Stamp performed better than other apps, with a higher matching rate and only a couple of occasional skipped songs. On a playlist where I keep old and new music discoveries from relatively minor and lesser known artists, Stamp missed 10 songs out of 140; similar utilities skipped over 20.

Moving between music streaming services isn’t fun, and even if you transfer entire playlists, there’s still a lot of information you won’t be able to carry over, such as your likes and listening habits. However, as long as you want to make sure your playlists can follow you around, Stamp is fast, accurate, and it works with the most popular services people use to listen to music (including YouTube playlists).

Stamp is free to download, with a $9.99 In-App Purchase to unlock the Pro version for iPhone and iPad.

MACSTORIES COLLECTIONS

Board Games for iOS, Vol. 2

Mysterium

Mysterium can best be described as a mix between two other games: Clue/Cluedo and Dixit. In it, one player occupies the role of a ghost who tries to help everyone else find its killer; the other players work together to decipher the ghost’s clues. Each of these clues is given as a vision card: a beautiful, but vague piece of artwork made up of many different elements. These cards are given to help players guess the crime’s correct suspect, location, and weapon. The app is extremely well-polished – one of the best I’ve seen for a board game – and it includes options for online multiplayer or solo play against the computer, as well as a story mode.


Pandemic

In Pandemic, players are tasked with the weighty job of stopping deadly diseases from spreading throughout the globe. All players work cooperatively to make this happen, and success requires significant teamwork and thoughtful planning. There’s a tutorial mode that walks you step-by-step through a full game before you get thrown into the sometimes stress-inducing situation of playing without that help. Once you do embark into a real game, there are several difficulty levels so you can ramp up the challenge over time. The app supports local multiplayer with up to four players, but no online multiplayer.


Sushi Go!

Sushi Go! is much lighter fare than preventing a global pandemic. In this drafting game you receive an assortment of sushi each turn, but are limited to keeping only one of them. Once you’ve made your selection, a new batch of sushi gets passed to you, and your former batch moves on to the next player. Gameplay proceeds like this, with you selecting one sushi at a time, until the round ends and points are scored based on the types and combinations of sushi you’ve accumulated. It’s cute, fun, simple, and the app is clean and polished. I particularly like it on iPhone, as games can be played quickly while on the go.


Agricola

Agricola is a farming simulation game that involves a lot of strategy. Players compete to make the best farm they can, using their limited number of turns to do things like acquire resources, build fences, plant crops, purchase livestock, and more. The challenge with all of this is the scarcity factor. There’s a lot to do, and not enough turns to do it all. Often the player who strikes the best balance between all different possible paths of investment will win the game. Agricola’s app has been around for several years, and isn’t updated very frequently, but it still seems to work well. You can play it solo, through pass-and-play, or online.


Coup

Coup is a turn-based bluffing game where players are assigned two different role cards, each of which has a special ability on it. Players use those special abilities to earn resources and take out the other players one by one. The catch is that any ability can be used, from any existing role cards – whether you actually have those cards or not. This is where the bluffing mechanic comes in. If you use an ability, anyone can challenge whether you truly have the role card that grants that ability. If they call your bluff and they’re right, it harms you, while if they’re wrong, it harms them. The game’s on iPhone and iPad, but there’s no local multiplayer, only online play.

TIPS

Tips and tricks to master your apps and be more productive.

Creating a Personal Wiki with DEVONthink

In the first installment of my new iPad Diaries series on MacStories, I detailed how I’ve been using DEVONthink’s advanced file management features to organize my research material. One of the power-user options I mentioned is the ability to generate links to individual files and groups, which allow you to reopen a document or folder from anywhere on iOS.

Besides being ideal candidates for launcher apps such as Workflow and Launch Center Pro, these URL schemes can also be used to assemble wiki-like reference documents in DEVONthink itself. In a Markdown note, simply insert a link to another item (generated with the ‘Copy Item Link’ button) and, once the note is rendered as rich text, you’ll be able to tap the link to open the file directly.

This creates some interesting use cases for DEVONthink as a personal wiki tool, and I’m considering the idea of keeping a “master note” with links to other MacStories-specific documents that I can access from the root level of the app’s inbox.

SHORTCUTS CORNER

Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.

Shortcuts Essentials

Sharing Links Between Music Services with Songlink

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I’ve been keeping an eye on Songlink, a web service to share a song across multiple music streaming services, for the past couple of months since I was first told about it on Twitter.

Songlink’s premise is similar to SoundShare: given a song from one of the major streaming services, the app returns a custom URL that will open a webpage with buttons to listen to the song in multiple places. Both SoundShare and Songlink are ways to share one link that, however, works for a variety of streaming ecosystems, which is great when you may not know which music service the recipient is using. Unlike SoundShare, though, Songlink is a website with no native presence on iOS.

Earlier this week, Songlink graduated to version 2.0 with an improved design and a basic API to assemble links easily by prepending songlink.com/ to a song’s link or product ID. The API is documented here, and, as someone who knows how annoying it is to receive a link for a service you don’t use, I created separate Songlink workflows based on Apple Music and Spotify.

If you’re an Apple Music user, you can turn a song you’re listening to into a Songlink URL with just a couple of taps from the Workflow widget. Thanks to the native ‘Get Current Song’ action, we can build a ‘Search iTunes Store’ action that uses Magic Variables for a song to return a list of rich results from iTunes. Tap one, the song’s ID will be extracted, and you’ll end up with a Songlink URL in your clipboard.

The currently playing song is extracted by Workflow and an iTunes Store product ID is returned.

In a couple of seconds, you can switch from the Workflow widget to a webpage associated with the song you can share with friends or followers on Twitter or iMessage:

If you use Spotify, there’s an extra step involved. As I detailed in my Spotify Center workflow (MacStories Weekly, Issue 58), the lack of a native ‘Get Current Spotify Song’ means we have to find a different way to tell Workflow what we’re listening to. The easiest solution, in my opinion, is to manually copy a song’s link from Spotify and run the workflow from the widget. In this version, the workflow will extract the ID from the Spotify URL, call the Spotify API to get the song’s metadata, and copy the Songlink URL to the clipboard. As with Apple Music, a confirmation alert is displayed at the end of the process:

A regex extracts song IDs from Spotify URLs.

Services like Songlink are a fantastic idea to overcome the lock-in effect of music streaming services that don’t talk to each other. I hope Songlink sticks around because it solves a real problem (you can make a donation here, if you want).

You can get my two Songlink workflows here and here.

Making a Custom ’ Add to Todoist’ Workflow

Last week, I came across this question by Club member Jameson on whether it would be possible to put together a custom ‘Add to Todoist’ workflow:

Question: I’ve started getting into Workflow more recently and am looking to expand on what’s currently available with the Todoist integration. I would like to be able to quickly generate a new task with a set project, date, and label. All I want to be prompted for is the actual task’s text itself. I don’t see a way to add a label with the current Todoist integration in Workflow. It would appear that the only way to do this would be to use Workflow’s ‘Get Contents of URL’ action as an API request. I’m very much a novice as far as using APIs, so any help you could offer would be awesome. (Jameson M.)

This was an interesting request for a couple of reasons. First, it’s true that Workflow’s native Todoist action doesn’t support labels, which always felt like an odd omission. As someone who uses labels as the backbone of Todoist filters, the inability to programmatically add them to new tasks from Workflow seemed like something I could fix by myself. Even better, though, working with the Todoist API sounded like a solid learning opportunity – particularly for the workarounds involved with dictionaries and arrays in Workflow.

Before setting up any custom Todoist workflow, you’ll need your personal API token. You can copy yours in Todoist’s Settings under Account; this code will grant you unrestricted access to the API for testing purposes on your account.

To authenticate with Workflow, I saved the Todoist API token as a text file named Token.txt in iCloud Drive/Workflow/Logins/Todoist. I even made a workflow to simplify the creation of text files in Workflow’s iCloud Drive sub-folders.

After figuring out authentication, I knew I needed a way to extract user information such as projects and labels from the Todoist API. Fortunately, this is something I’ve done before. When I covered Workflow’s launch of web API actions, I included two workflows to export Todoist projects as CSV templates and re-import them later into a project (it still works, and it’s pretty great). As I explained back then, Todoist’s Sync API has a method to return all resources for a user account; extracting projects and labels is simply a matter of iterating over a JSON response (as a dictionary) to build a slimmer dictionary containing project/label names and IDs.

Iterating on a JSON response to rebuild a dictionary.Iterating on a JSON response to rebuild a dictionary.

The second dictionary can be presented in a list, and the user’s choice (the ID) will be saved to a variable. This routine – rebuilding a subset of a dictionary with ‘Text’ and ‘Get Dictionary from Input’ actions – is one of my most used techniques when dealing with web services in Workflow. I highly recommend you implement it as well.

The problem with making my own ‘Add to Todoist’ action was Workflow’s lack of native support for JSON arrays. In the Todoist API, methods to add new items (whether they’re new tasks, labels, or projects) require inserting multiple parameters into a JSON array. In Workflow, there is only support for JSON dictionaries through native actions. Luckily, the Workflow team informed me that it’s possible to wrap a dictionary inside an array simply by enclosing it in square brackets as pictured below. If you ever find yourself dealing with APIs that require arrays in Workflow, remember this trick.

At this point, I figured out authentication with the Todoist API, extracting IDs of existing projects and labels, and how to turn Workflow’s built-in dictionaries into JSON arrays accepted by Todoist. The final piece of the puzzle was making the API call to add a new task, file it under a project, and assign it properties such as name, title, due date, and labels. After reading through the documentation to understand how to assemble the various fields required for task content and task ID (unique identifiers for the Todoist API), I came up with a framework that can be reused across different types of Todoist workflows with multiple degrees of customization.

The best part: you only need to prepare your Todoist API token without worrying about anything else. This is where it gets fun.

Just as I did for Toggl, I’ve put together some “setup workflows” to extract information from the Todoist API. In the Get Todoist Project and Get Todoist Label workflows, you’ll be able to authenticate with your account, choose from a list of existing projects and labels, and get the ID of the selected item.

You can use these IDs in separate workflows that add new Todoist tasks if you want to save items directly into a specific project or label. Remember: you’ll always need item IDs if you want to talk to the Todoist API.

In terms of adding tasks, I created a few variations of the same workflow, with some functional differences between them. First, I built what Jameson requested: a custom Todoist workflow that asks for text but always saves a new task into a specific project, with a specific label, and with a due date already set. Some aspects worth noting:

  • Project and Label IDs need to be pasted in the respective ‘Text’ actions;
  • The due date is typed in natural language, per Todoist’s spec, and also needs to be configured depending on your needs;
  • In the arguments of the Task Content dictionary, you will notice an auto_reminder=True flag. This tells Todoist to automatically add a reminder to a task based on its due date;
  • Only one label per task is supported in this workflow;
  • The name of the task is defined by a ‘Text’ action with an Ask When Run variable. This will prompt you to type a task every time you run the workflow.

Based on Jameson’s request, I then built upon the workflow to add a bevy of options that aren’t available in the native Todoist action for Workflow. Starting from the same foundation, I created a separate version – which I called Enhanced Todoist Add – that offers several additional controls and features:

  • The workflow prompts you to pick a label and project from your Todoist account every time;
  • If run from the action extension in Safari or other browsers, it’ll use the webpage’s source URL as a link on the task’s title;
  • If run from Safari and if text is selected on the webpage, the workflow will use the selection as the note for the task, keeping its formatting intact;
  • A due date can be typed in natural language every time the workflow runs;
  • A banner notification is displayed after a task has been added to your Todoist;
  • The workflow asks if you want to add a note to the newly created task, which you can type in a text box at runtime (Markdown formatting is supported as well);
  • A slightly different version of the same workflow excludes labels for people who don’t use them in Todoist.
Saving from Safari with the action extension.
Text clipped from a Safari webpage converted to rich text in a Todoist task’s note field.

I have personally found Enhanced Todoist Add to be useful to save bits of text selected in Safari as new tasks in my MacStories project. However, with the ability to set predefined projects and labels, I’m also considering Jameson’s approach for dedicated workflows that create new tasks into specific projects (like shared ones) with labels that don’t require inputting anything at all.

I had a lot of fun working with the Todoist API, which has been further demonstration of Workflow’s terrific web automation functionalities and Magic Variables. You can find all the workflows I created for the Todoist API below:

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SHORTCUTS CORNER

Get help and suggestions for your iOS shortcuts and productivity apps.

Member Requests

Question: I’m trying to time-track my oversleep time as CGP Grey does. I want to get Zapier to automatically start a timer at a specific time every morning. And then I want to run a workflow on my iPhone to stop the timer. Is this possible? (Jakob Sundell, @jakobsundell)

There are two parts to this. First, we need to set up a system that will start a Toggl timer at a specific time every morning.

This is very simple to se up on Zapier: all you need is the Schedule by Zapier trigger, which will execute at a predefined time every day and continue to the next action. In your case, you’ll want the second action to be Start Time Entry, which will start running a Toggl timer. Optionally, you can enter a Timer description and project directly in the Zapier template.

When you wake up and want to tell Toggl to stop the oversleep timer, you can install my simplified Stop Timers workflow. This set of actions authenticates with the Toggl API (you can read my explanation here – in short, you’ll need to enter your username and password in the first ‘Text’ action) and it’ll stop any running timer. This way, you should be able to get out of bed and, even if bleary-eyed and unfocused, swipe right on your iPhone, tap the Workflow widget, and go back to resuming your morning routine.

You can get the workflow here.

Question: I’ve had intermittent problems with actions not behaving as expected in workflows. Deleting the actions and replacing them with “fresh” instances of exactly the same ones seems to solve the problem. I posted about it on Reddit. Have you seen this? (Khoi Vinh, @khoi)

I’ve run into similar issues and other glitches (such as Text actions “disappearing” while editing) in the latest version of Workflow, particularly for old workflows adapted to Magic Variables. It sounds like the Workflow team is aware of these problems, which should be fixed in an upcoming update.

Submit a Workflow Request

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WEEKLY Q&A

Your weekly correspondence with the MacStories team.

Question: I’ve been going back and forth between Copied and Clips for iOS on my iPhone. Do you have a strong preference for one over the other? If so, why? (Chris Meisenzahl, @speedmaster)

I like Copied for a couple of reasons. First, it offers a ton of advanced features (including custom JS scripts and merging rules), which make the app more than a basic clipboard manager. Furthermore, Copied can be accessed quickly from anywhere – whether that’s a Mac (there’s a desktop version), the excellent Today widget (which supports custom lists), or the iOS keyboard. Every time I need to save something for later, Copied is ready.

Question: I’m having issues with the Airmail to Todoist action. I am using your latest Magic Variables remake and it does not work properly for me. I had the same issue with the first FormatEmail2 workflow as well. (Tyler Abate)

I know a few people have had this same problem with my workflow, and I think it’s related to a bug in Airmail. I’ve run across a problem in the app where the custom separator would sometimes be automatically removed from the action’s settings. If my Airmail workflow isn’t working for you, make sure to check the custom separator is still present in the custom action configuration screen.

Question: I’m looking for a notes app that will be more useful (categories, different types of notes, etc.) than the built-in Notes. I’m wondering if you had a chance to look at Zoho Notebook? It’s relatively new for Mac, but the iOS version has been out for a while. It claims to be an alternative to Evernote, and it’s free. I’m curious to know what you think, and if you have other suggestions for alternatives to Notes. (Bob Weinstein)

As I wrote in November, I think Bear is a solid alternative to Notes. I’ve since switched back to Apple Notes because of its sharing feature and superior sync conflict resolution, but Bear is a powerful app – especially if you’re looking for URL schemes and other automation features.

I heard about Zoho Notebook, but have never tried it myself. I would love to hear from other Club members who may use the app about their impressions and usage tips.

Question: It is nice that every tech podcast is supported by Squarespace, which I have supported and am now using, but the Squarespace Editor does not play well with my iPad Pro. I have tried the iCab app and other similar “full browser” emulators – still no success. Is there a solution/workaround/workflow to be able to manage my site entirely from the iPad? (Chad Puckett, @cpuck)

Unfortunately, there is not a solution that encompasses all of the features available as part of Squarespace’s web app. Squarespace has iOS apps that work with its blogging, analytics, photo galleries, and commerce features, but if you want to do something like change the theme of your site or revise other design elements, you are out of luck.

I run my company’s website on Squarespace and although I have succeeded in making minor changes to the site using Safari on iOS before, I don’t recommend it. The interface isn’t designed for touch and at some point you will run into a wall where you are unable to do what you want. We have a similar problem with MailChimp, which we use to produce the Club MacStories newsletters. These sorts of drag and drop, WYSIWYG web apps are easy to use on a Mac, but what they gain in ease of use on the desktop, they sacrifice in mobile compatibility.

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THE ALBUM

We love stickers in iMessage, and here we'll share some of our favorites.

Ragga Muffins

Every week there’s a sticker pack on the iMessage Store that makes me think ‘Huh, I never thought I’d see that.’ This week it was this fun assortment of muffin monsters.

Oh My Goats!

I didn’t know I needed these goat stickers until the first time I sent a goat standing on a taco. Their absurdity will leave your friends scratching their heads, which is precisely the point.

The iMessage app included with the ChefsFeed iOS app can pull up dishes at nearby restaurants, food guides, and videos all from within the Messages app, which is a good way to plan your next meal out with friends.

The Catbears is a website for kids with lots of neat arts and crafts activities. These cute stickers feature Fox and Duck, the two main characters from the site.

APP DEBUTS

Noteworthy new app releases and updates, handpicked by the MacStories team.

Mimics

Mimics is a new party game that makes for a fun – and potentially embarrassing – time. The active player each round is presented with a handcrafted, cartoony picture that depicts a face they’re tasked with imitating. Once you’ve set your facial pose, snap a photo, and the other players will be tasked with guessing, from a selection of pictures given to them alongside your photo, which picture you were trying to mimic. It’s extremely simple, but gameplay can bring about lots of laughs as ridiculous facial expressions are made. Besides the game’s local multiplayer in Party mode, you can also play online with your Facebook friends.


Audulus 3

If you’re into making music on the iPad, Audulus feels like a remarkable solution. In a futuristic interface, you can build synthesizers, design sounds, and process audio streams with low-latency well suited for a live performance. You can use a MIDI keyboard or control surface to interact with the app, which can also process multiple voices with polyphony, has unlimited Undo support, works with iCloud and the Mac version, and features a variety of built-in nodes and modules. Plus, it looks amazing.


Ticketmaster

The latest version of the company’s iOS app has added integration with Apple Music. You can now scan your library for artists you like, which will be added as watched artists in Ticketmaster to receive notifications for their upcoming concerts.


Favorites

Favorites is a dedicated reader for posts from Facebook Pages. Posts are displayed as text messages in a conversation-like UI, which lets you leave comments as replies to a thread. You can use 3D Touch to preview posts with an in-app web view, and you can try the app with 5 pages for free (there’s an In-App Purchase to unlock more).


EatMessage

Advertised as the first “selfie game” for iMessage, EatMessage will have you use your mouth as the controller to eat or avoid food displayed on screen. A unique combination of the front-facing camera with 3D graphics and the iMessage framework – certainly worth a try to share a few laughs with friends.


Encode

Encode teaches programming in bite-sized chunks. There are two tracks to the app. The first is ‘Coding,’ which teaches basic programming concepts like strings, variables, and Booleans using JavaScript. The second is HTML, which dives into HTML and CSS basics. Each topic is broken into sections with several interactive lessons. The top of the screen includes a brief explanation of the concept with an editor underneath where you type the code for each lesson. When you tap the run button, your code is executed, and the results appear in the console at the bottom of the screen. There are also hints available in case you get stuck.


Narcissus

The look of this game reminds me a little of Nidhogg, an indie game available on the PS4 and elsewhere. Both games share the same primitive pixel art style, but that’s where the similarities end. Narcissus falls squarely in the endless runner genre. What makes Narcissus different from other games in its category is that you control two runners at once. Each side of the screen controls jumping for one of the runners.

One runner runs across the top of blocks with gaps between them, while the other runs upside down on the bottom of the blocks. You need to jump from block to block without falling into the gaps. At first, it’s easy because the blocks are symmetrical, but that doesn’t last long. The game gets challenging fast as you try to time the jumps of two runners taking into account the different landscapes each is running across.


ooo - play with zoom

This app records short videos with three styles of zoom using either of the iPhone’s cameras. One mode zooms in and out based on how hard you press the screen. Another zooms in and out as you slide your finger up and down the screen. The final mode only zooms in as you press on the screen. Recordings are accompanied by music built into the app that you can change. Also, you can record a voiceover to go along with your creation. The results can be silly, but that’s the point – to play with zoom.


OutlineEdit

OutlineEdit, an outlining app for the Mac that I reviewed last year, received a big update recently. OutlineEdit’s power is in the speed with which it lets you get ideas down in a simple outline form. With the most recent update, OutlineEdit is now free and includes recently-added features of macOS, including Touch Bar support and tabs. Both are useful for quickly creating and managing multiple outlines at once without flipping between multiple windows. OutlineEdit’s look has also been refreshed with a new, bolder design for highlighted sections of your outlines.


SoundSource

SoundSource by Rogue Amoeba is a menu bar app for macOS that makes your Mac’s sound settings easier to access. When I start recording a podcast, I can almost guarantee that my audio inputs and outputs are set to something other than what they should be. From SoundSource’s dropdown window, you can switch inputs and outputs and adjust volume for each source. There is also a Play-Thru window you can open to adjust the left and right channels of each audio source independently. Another nice feature is that the app is free if you already own an active license to another Rogue Amoeba product. Otherwise, the app is $9.99.

HOME SCREENS

Friends of MacStories share their iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch Home screens.

Dave Mark

Twitter: @davemark. Executive Editor, The Loop and author of Learn C on the Mac, Beginning iPhone Development, and other development books*.*

I’ve long been a fan of the Plus form factor. Part of the appeal is the larger screen real estate, better for watching movies and reading small-print websites. But I also appreciate that extra row of icons on the Home screen.

My Home screen setup keeps the stock Apple apps towards the top, my most used apps in the middle, and folders set up for games, travel, and music. I dialed the string 3001#12345# to launch field test mode, which displays my signal strength as a number instead of a series of dots. You can see that I’ve got Bluetooth on to pair with my Apple Watch and headphones.

The apps I tend to use the most are in the dock at the bottom of my Home screen: Gmail, Phone, Safari, and Music. I’m actually not a big fan of the official Gmail client, but I still have not found an email client that does everything I need. Gmail does what I need, but I find the interface a bit clunky. I like the fact that I can build my own email processing rules, apply multiple labels to a single email thread, and that there are a ton of tools in the Google lab I can make use of. The one rule I use a lot is the delayed Undo. Basically, when I send an email, I have about 5 seconds to change my mind and tap Undo. I’ve done this more times than you can imagine.

Safari is another critical app for me. I do a lot of reading and appreciate that all the tabs I leave open on my iPhone and iPad are available on my Mac for my morning Loop writeups. I tend to build up my Loop posting queue during the day, then curate and writeup the posts each morning on my Mac.

The stock Apple apps I use the most are Messages and Notes. I love how my notes automatically sync to iCloud so I always have my critical notes with me (iPhone) but can edit them on my Mac. Notes is my de facto database.

The other stock Apple apps I use a lot are Photos, Camera, Maps, App Store, Contacts and, of course, Settings. I use Reminders constantly, but not so much the app as much as via Siri. Everyone around me is used to my stopping in the middle of something, holding down the Home button on my iPhone, then starting a sentence with either “Siri, remind me at xxx to yyy” or “Siri, remind me when I get to xxx to yyy”. My whole organization system would break if I didn’t have Siri. I have “Hey, Siri” enabled on both my Apple Watch and my iPhone.

Now on to the non-Apple apps.

Surprisingly, two apps I use a lot are Wikipanion and IMDb. I write a lot (mostly for The Loop) and use Wikipanion as a reference tool. I’m also a big media buff and use IMDb as a reference. I take the contents of both with a grain of salt (Wikipedia can be wrong and the reviews in IMDb are just opinions), but love both apps as resources.

ESPN is my go-to sports tracker. I’m a big sports fan and the ESPN app is all I need for scores, news and standings.

Fantastical is a terrific calendar app, giving me access to my schedule on my Mac, iPhone, and iPad. There’s also a complication for the Apple Watch that always shows me the next event on my schedule. It works well for me.

I read a lot and have bought into the Kindle ecosystem. The app works well, though I tend to do most of my reading on my iPad (bigger screen). But I do enough reading on my iPhone that the Kindle app keeps its Home screen spot.

PCalc is my calculator of choice. This is my kind of calculator. Lots of settings, built-in constants, conversions. Turn it sideways and you get a boatful of scientific functions. Basically, all I could ever ask for in a calculator.

The Google Drive app gives me access to a lot of my work files. I do a lot in the Google ecosystem, so having remote access to my files is critical.

I am a big believer in supporting sources of real news, no matter where you fall on the political spectrum. I subscribe to the Washington Post (digital and paper) and The New York Times. If you are on the fence about subscribing, consider that you can get a free digital subscription to the Washington Post if you are an Amazon Prime member, and The New York Times has a pretty easy to find 50% discount (do a Google search).

I travel a fair amount, so Google Maps is a backup to Apple Maps. Between the two of them, I’ll get where I’m going with good info on traffic, directions, and time of arrival estimates.

Twitter is my social network of choice (I’m @davemark if you want to connect – I’m pretty responsive), and Tweetbot is my favorite Twitter client. I do switch over to the official Twitter client periodically, but I always find myself going back into Tweetbot’s warm embrace.

Finally, I’ve got folders set up for Games, Travel, and Music.

I love the Kingdom Rush games, including Frontiers and Origins. I enjoy Pokémon Go, though that seems to have flattened out for me. Some other favorites are Super Mario Run, Solitaire, the beautifully rendered Monument Valley, Nanuleu (and pretty much every game John Voorhees recommends), and Really Bad Chess. I tend to like tower defence games, and games I can play in short bursts.

As for travel stuff, I have the typical airline, hotel, and car sharing apps. I did switch from Uber to Lyft, an experiment still in progress.

Finally, music. This is where I keep SoundShare (you really should give this app a try) and my guitar setup. I’m currently using GarageBand and JamUp, though I do play around with different apps, depending on the type of music I am working on. Right now my focus is straight-up rock, working my way through all the solos in Reeling in the Years. I love it when a complex guitar part clicks into place for me. It’s very satisfying.

So that’s about it. Got some games or guitar apps to recommend? Please do ping me on Twitter @davemark. See you there.

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